Gender Bias In Physics
Things That Make Me Quite Cross
It’s exam season at Carleton University this week, and so I’ve been running extra office hours this week, so that students have an opportunity to ask me any questions that may be puzzling them, as they prepare for the exam. The time between end of class and the start of exam period has been severely truncated this year, which is another Thing That Makes Me Quite Cross, and I will probably rant, oops, write about, at a later date.
As usual, most of the people coming to see me in office hours are actually the students who are doing well in the course, most of the people who really, really need some help, will never come to see me to get it. This is very unfortunate, but in classes of three hundred students (Yet another Thing That Makes Me Quite Cross), it is very difficult to track everyone. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.
So, on Thursday, a woman student came to see me to ask about a few physics related topics, and her likely final grade. She is a student in my general science class — students who are taking a science degree and have to take a course or two in physics as part of their program. There are slightly more women than men enrolled in the course. This is common in many university programs. (Note that I am quite comfortable with a spectrum of gender identities — as a physicist, a spectrum is an easy concept to accept — and so I’m making a first order binary approximation here, as physicists are wont to do). Now, I make it an absolute priority to make sure that nobody gets to feel they can’t do physics. Everybody can. And nobody should feel excluded by gender. I’m married to a woman physicist, and she is a better physicist than I am. I always tell my classes this. We also met in a physics lab, and I tell them that too!
My student related a conversation she had overheard between two male students sitting near her, which went along the lines of:
“Why are there so many girls enrolled in this class? This is a physics class”
This made me quite cross.
Being British, and prone to serious understatement, that means full-on eye-bulging, steam-coming-out-of-the-ears, Incredible-Hulk-shirt-ripping-and-turning-green angry. To find out that young men, in my class, are still coming out with this type of prejudicial nonsense, is very disheartening. If I had heard them uttering that kind of thing, there would have been a sharp response. I teach a very wide range of students from many nations, many religions and beliefs, and very much a diverse and vibrant group. That’s one reason I love teaching the first year classes. The Diversity is wonderful. And I have always striven to make them accessible to all, and make sure that everyone gets the encouragement that they need in order to succeed. There is absolutely no evidence that there is any gender or genetic superiority in any group. There are huge cultural differences and cultural pressures which result in stereotypes of who is “good” or “bad” at a particular subject area. But that’s human prejudice. I want everyone to do the best they can, and I see no gender or race differences.
So, if you are reading this and you come from a group which is currently under-represented in science, or considered “not as good at…” a certain subject, then, I would say “Don’t believe it. You are as good as anyone else. Trust yourself. If your background circumstances have put you at a disadvantage, come forward, so we can help”. I’m here to help.
And if you are reading this, and you come from a group which assumes that it has superior competence over other groups, then I would say, “Science does not support this view. Consider what advantages society has given you. You might have to dig deep to find them, because, as a member of an advantaged group, you quite often don’t realise just where those advantages come from”. I’m here to help you get over this attitude.
Anyone and everyone can succeed in my classes. As we will see in the final examination tonight. I have confidence in them.
